


Searching for the Snorkack

by Cait_Sidhe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Shadow Out of Time - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Archaeology, Camping, Creepy, Crumple-Horned Snorkack, Eldritch, Exploration, Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Mystery, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Psychological Horror, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 04:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16825231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cait_Sidhe/pseuds/Cait_Sidhe
Summary: Luna takes Harry, Hermione, and Ginny along with her and her dad on a trip to Sweden in search of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Their adventure leads to some mysterious ruins, where they find something much more terrifying than they had bargained for...





	Searching for the Snorkack

**Author's Note:**

> The last section of this is based upon the end part of Lovecraft's novella "The Shadow Out of Time".
> 
> Wasn't quite sure how to tag this, so I apologize if some tags don't fit quite right. This type of writing is really difficult to ascribe things to. Same for the rating-- I gave it T to be safe, but there's not really objectively anything specific that would make it so (no bad language, sexual undertones, violence, etc), just a really creepy theme.

“Oh, thank you so much for coming with me!” Luna beamed. “It’s going to be a lot of fun, you’ll see.”

Hermione seemed to be holding back a snicker, but thankfully Luna didn’t notice. “Yes, it’ll be… interesting.”

“Just us girls. No boys getting in the way,” Ginny asserted. “It’ll be nice for a change.”

“Ginny, last I checked, I was male,” Harry pointed out. “So unless you know something I don’t…”

“And my father is male, too... although I suppose I haven’t actually checked,” Luna supplied.

Ginny blushed. “Well, no brothers getting in the way, at least.”

“It’s too bad Ron and Neville couldn’t come too,” Luna said sadly. 

“Yeah, too bad,” Harry said, sharing a look with Hermione. Neville had an excuse, visiting family, but they knew Ron could have come too. He’d be “helping Fred and George with the shop” as often as a centaur could be caught reading tea leaves; it was merely a half-baked excuse not to go vacationing with Luna. For that is what they were preparing to do: Luna had invited all five of her friends to go to Sweden with her and her father to look for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, as her father had gotten quite a large pile of money selling the Daily Prophet his interview with Harry on Voldemort’s return. Harry had jumped on that opportunity immediately; the less time at the Dursleys, the better. Plus, maybe it would take his mind off of Sirius, he hoped. Ginny of course couldn’t turn down Luna, and Harry had convinced a skeptical Hermione to come along too, as he wasn’t so sure about being alone with just Luna and Ginny for such a long time. For it would be a long time: the trip was planned to be five weeks or until they found the thing, whichever came first, but as the beast didn’t exist it was a guarantee to be five weeks. Harry didn’t mind that they wouldn’t find it. After all, the more time there, the less time at Number 4, Privit Drive; plus, he’d never been camping before, unless one counted the Quidditch World Cup. Even if the Dursleys had taken him on their vacations, they would never have been caught dead doing something so “barbaric” as camping, as they called it. Although, the tents they had weren’t anything like muggle tents, so it wasn’t quite the same.

“So, how are we getting there?” Hermione asked. “Floo? Portkey?”

“Oh, no, neither of those; they send you through the netherworld, where you can contract swamp pox,” Luna said matter-of-factly. No one asked for her to clarify, as the disease probably didn't exist.

“Then how…?”

“We’re riding Thestrals, of course!”

“You’re joking, right…?” Hermione asked tepidly.

Luna looked at her, wide-eyed. “Why would I joke about that?”

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again, unsure how to respond.

“You sure there’s not another way?” Ginny asked. “I don’t fancy riding an invisible thing again…”

Harry too had objections. “Yeah, Luna, I love flying, but won’t that distance take twenty hours or something? I don’t think it’s safe going for that long.”

Luna looked at Harry like he had five heads. “Of course not. It only takes seven.”

“Luna, Sweden is 1500 kilometers away!” Hermione proclaimed. “For it to take seven, it’d have to be flying at nearly 200kph! Not even birds can go that fast, let alone a huge horse.”

“Actually,” Luna casually informed her, “The peregrine falcon can reach 380kph in a dive. And the largest bird of prey, the golden eagle, goes about the same speed of a thestral.”

“Oh.” Hermione said, embarrassed about being wrong. Then, not to be outsmarted, corrected Luna: “Actually the largest bird of prey is the condor.”

“And my Firebolt can go over 200kph too,” Harry said proudly, ignoring Hermione. “If you want, you two can borrow it. It must be scarier riding thestrals for you two as you can’t see it.”

“I don’t know, maybe I should just sit this one out, brooms aren’t really my thing either… actually, flying in general really isn’t…”

“Are you afraid of flying?” asked Ginny curiously. 

“Well, I’m fine on airplanes, but brooms and animals are just so unstable…” 

“Well, I suppose you can ride in the sleigh my dad and the luggage will be in…” Luna mused.

“You have a sleigh?” Hermione asked, looking relieved. “Thank Merlin.”

“Yes, you and Ginny can ride in it.”

“And what about me?” Harry asked.

“Oh, there’s no room, we’ll have to ride them…”

“What if we attach the luggage to them?” Hermione suggested.

“Oh, yes, I suppose that works.” Luna looked a little disappointed. “I’ll go tell Daddy to do that. Come, I’ll introduce you, and then we can leave.”

*******

The pentet arrived in Sweden just after dark. From what they could see in the evening light, they were on a stretch of heath near a very rocky coast. The weather wasn’t that different than that of Ottery St Catchpole, but they were all shivering, as they’d forgotten that open sleds going 200kph hundreds of kilometers above the ground could cause quite a wind chill. Plus, they were drenched, as the thestrals had decided flying through a cloud would be great fun… Luna had failed to mention that the thestrals weren’t actually trained like Hagrid’s forbidden forest ones, rather ones wandering nearby that Luna had asked politely to help. It was unclear how they would get home, as the thestrals took off as soon as they were unlatched from the sled and luggage removed.

“We’re near Stockholm, aren’t we?” Hermione mused. “Maybe we could visit there?”

“What? Why would we go there?” Xenophilus asked in bafflement. “The Snorkack isn’t going to be in a city or town!”

“Well, I just thought maybe we could stop by, see the sites--”

“This isn’t a sightseeing tour,” Luna said rather coolly. “We’re here to find the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, not fool around.”

“Right, sorry.”

“It’s okay, Hermione,” Harry told her quietly, as the Lovegoods and Ginny set off to erect the tent. “I don’t think they meant to come off so harsh; they’re just, you know…”

Hermione smiled slightly. “Yes, I know. They’re really set on finding this thing. I just thought, perhaps, being here for five weeks, an occasional break could be good, stay in a hotel or something and see a city or two; I’m quite leery about being in a tent for five weeks, as such a cramped space could start to get everyone on edge,” Hermione eyed the tent. “When my parents and I went camping for a week, we had the same size tent and it got to be not very comfortable by the end of it! Seriously, five people in that?”

“Well, I don’t think you’ll have to be concerned about the space,” Harry grinned. “Wizarding tents are a bit roomier than they appear…”

Hermione blushed. “W-well, yes, that’s true…” she backtracked, as they wandered over to enter the tent, which had gone up in seconds. “But still, it can’t be that much…” she trailed off as she entered the tent, which was indeed much, much larger.

The inside of the Lovegoods’ unassuming moss-colored tent was effectively a full cabin, with two nice-sized bedrooms big enough for everyone to get their own bed, a full bathroom, a kitchen large enough to fit a dining table with room to spare, and a common area complete with a fireplace, couches, armchairs, and coffee table. The color choices for the decor were as eccentric as the twos personalities were.

Regardless of the niceness of the tent, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny had a feeling they would be spending very little time inside it. Xenophilius and Luna seemed quite adamant about the search, preferring to spend every moment possible hunting the creature. This wasn't going to be a relaxing vacation at all.

*******

Somehow, Harry and Luna had become separated from the other three. Now, this would be fine if they were someplace well-traveled or in a town, but as luck had it, they were in a deep forest. Sometime during their wanderings, it had reached twilight.

“Okay, Luna, are you sure that radio isn’t working?”

“Yes, I am sure. All it emits is a weird static, regardless of what I do. See?”

Harry covered his ears. “Yes, yes, I know, turn it off!” The static was not normal radio static at all, although Harry couldn’t exactly place why. Regardless, it was extremely eerie; in fact, this entire area of the woods itself was extremely eerie.

The two walked around a bit more. Harry shivered slightly; he only wore jeans and a t-shirt, and it was getting quite chilly the darker the sky grew, as they were fairly high in the mountains. Plus, a slight fog had descended, whose dampness only made the cold feel worse. They had brought coats, but they were in the larger enchanted knapsack Xenophilius carried. All they had were simple packs with some basic things, like water bottles, trail mix, a compass, and some maps, the latter having proved useless. None of the trails around here matched, and the compass seemed to be broken, as it kept changing the direction it pointed.

“Maybe that child will show us where to go,” Luna suggested.

“Child? What child?” Harry followed Luna’s gaze. There was indeed a child there, or at least the semblance of one-- if you were excessively liberal with the term. At most it was a very warped, vague shape of a human, perhaps three feet high. A ghostly outline, yet somewhat more solid, almost as though it were made of a black flame shining through the fog. “Uh, Luna, I don’t think we should follow it…”

“Why not? Look, it’s beckoning us to follow…” Luna began slowly walking towards the thing.

Harry grabbed her pack, pulling her back. “Because the guide books mentioned creatures like those who try to lure travellers away off cliffs and into bogs, turning their souls into such once dead. Similar to hinkypunks, which you should have learned about in Defense.” In actuality, the thing was nothing like such, but Harry knew telling Luna that it was some unknown creature, if it could be called a creature, would only make her more determined to follow it. 

“Oh, right… well, he vanished anyway.” Harry didn't ask why Luna had assigned it a gender, or how she could even know it had one, if it did.

The fog had grown much thicker, and night had grown darker, leading them to both shiver immensely as they walked. They lit their wands. Harry wished he knew how to draw up the blue fire Hermione frequently used in winters; they had tried lighting a stick with a simple “incendio” to serve as a torch, but it was too damp out to catch on anything.

Suddenly, another point of light appeared in the distance. The two froze. Was it another eldritch creature? They held up their wands in a defensive position.

“Harry!” came a familiar voice, as a bushy-haired girl dashed out of the fog. As Harry lowered his wand, Hermione pulled him into a tight hug, then did so to Luna as well. “Are the others with you?” She asked breathlessly. “Oh, you’re shivering! Here, this will help some.” She held a bright jar of blue fire, emitting enough heat to warm them all slightly when the three huddled close.

Harry shook his head. “No. I thought you would be with them; never thought the group would get separated this much.”

“It’s these darn woods. You can’t see ten feet in front of you, and I swear it just absorbs sound when you shout. I assume your radio is out too?”

“Yep. Oh, and be careful; there’s some very weird things around here; Luna nearly got drawn off.”

“Weird things?”

“Yes, Swedish hinkypunks,” Luna told her, before wandering slightly ahead, deep in thought.

“I only told her that to stop her following it,” Harry muttered to Hermione so Luna couldn't hear. “It seemed to be some sort of, I don't know, spectre? Not physical, but not a ghost either. Made of black flame.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Never heard of anything like that before, and I've read all the magical beast compendiums and quite a few books on magical phenomenon like ghosts and specters. Maybe you miss-saw?”

“Maybe… either way, it undoubtedly was dangerous.”

“We should climb a tree,” Luna mused, rejoining them. “See if we can see anything…”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “In this fog? I doubt it. I think perhaps we should find a cave, get some rest; I’m sure the fog will be gone in the morning…”

“I’m really glad we can do magic here, or else we’d freeze to death,” Harry told them, as they took Hermione’s suggestion and began walking around to see if there were caves nearby. Being on a mountain, theoretically there should be. 

“Well, even if the Trace extended this far, they do make exceptions for life-threatening situations, you know,” Hermione informed him. “I think this qualifies. Although I rather do wish it extended here right now. Then they’d know where we were.”

“But if they knew you were here, they'd take you back,” Luna said sadly. They hadn't told anyone Harry would be going with them; as far as anyone else but Ron and Neville knew, he was still at Privet Drive, where he had been told to stay for his protection now that Voldemort was in the open. Well, they hoped no one else knew; or at least had hoped that, until now.

“Well, I'd rather that happen than dying in some strange woods,” Harry pointed out.

“Oh, that wouldn't be so bad, I think,” Luna told them, in a slightly dreamy voice. “After all, you'll get to meet them again.”

“Meet them?”

“Yes, your parents and Sirius.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it, unsure of what to say to that; luckily, Hermione quickly interrupted. “Please, can we not talk about death in a forest that seems to be straight out of a horror movie?”

The group walked in silence for a few minutes, until Harry suddenly called out, “Wait a second. Hermione, we do have a way to find them! The four-point spell!”

“Oh! Right! Here, I’ll do it.” Hermione balanced her wand in her hand and said “Point Me Xenophilius Lovegood!” Just as the compass had, the wand couldn’t figure out where exactly to point, choppily spinning back and forth. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

The woods were silent, the only sounds being their footsteps and breathing. The fog remained thick and foreboding, their wands and fire jar creating only a few feet of light around them. An owl hooted, and the three jumped. Soon, however, they did in fact come across a cave.

“Oh, thank goodness!” sighed Hermione. “I was really starting to think we wouldn’t find one. It must be past midnight!”

“It’s a really large cave, too,” Luna pointed out happily. “We could have a sortie in here!”

“A… what?”

“A party! And when we find some Snorkacks, they can party with us too!”

“I think you mean a soiree… hey, where’s Harry?”

“Oh, I think he followed the lovely cow-tailed girl further in.”

“Cow-tailed?! Luna, didn’t either of you read the guidebooks? That’s undoubtedly a Skogsrå!”

“Skogsrå?”

“Yes, Skogsrå; it lures people deep into caves via her beauty, then seduces them into kissing her, upon which she sucks out their soul!”

“Oooh, so like a female dementor?”

“Uh. Kinda the opposite aside from the kiss part... Come on, let’s go find him before that happens!”

Meanwhile, Harry was deep in the caves. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen was ahead, giggling and ducking around turns whenever he had nearly caught up with her. He had to be with her. She was the one for him. Whenever she turned a corner, she’d glance at him, with a smile and wink. Harry’s heart felt like it would burst out of his chest every time, and he picked up the pace. He just had to catch her!

Finally, they came to a dead end, a small round section of the cave. Harry approached her. She couldn’t run now. The lovely woman approached him, placing her hand on his cheek, slowly moving her face closer. An absolutely wonderful feeling washed over Harry, as though he would henceforth forever be full of joy. He leaned forwards, eager for that breathtaking moment when his lips would meet hers… as soon as they did, he would achieve eternal bliss...

“STUPEFY!” A bright red beam hit the woman in her chest, flinging her backwards into the wall of the cave. The Skogsrå fell to the ground, unconscious.

“No!” Harry lamented, making to run over to her, only for someone to grab his upper arm tightly and pull him backwards. “Hermione, let go!”

“No,” Hermione told Harry firmly. “Look, she’s not human! That’s a Skogsrå; see the cow’s tail?

Harry’s brain was rather fuzzy, but it was quickly clearing. A Skogsrå? Oh… now that he looked at her, the alluring pheromones absent due to her unconsciousness, she wasn’t actually so beautiful, and there was a tail, just as Hermione had said. “Oh…”

“Don’t sound so disappointed. You were seconds from losing your soul.”

“My soul?”

“Yes. They are female dementors, after all,” Luna informed him.

“No, Luna, I already told you that’s wrong,” said Hermione testily. “The only similarity is that they suck the soul out through your mouth, with a kiss. Otherwise they’re the opposite, luring you with their charm and making you feel immeasurably happy, until you willingly kiss them, upon which they take your soul.”

“And I was… seconds away…” Harry’s head was spinning. Then, it finally clicked. “That means, you saved my soul, Hermione,” he said in wonder.

“Yes, I did,” Hermione said curtly. Then, tears welled in her eyes, and she nearly tackled Harry as she hugged him. “Oh, Harry! I thought we were going to lose you…” she held him for nearly a full minute, then let him go. “Never do that again!” She scolded.

“Don’t worry, Hermione, I’ll be more careful.” Truthfully, Harry wasn't quite as concerned about the Skogsrå as Hermione was-- it seemed like nothing compared to the thing he and Luna had encountered earlier. He didn't want to bring that up again though, much preferring to forget he ever saw it.

*******

Harry opened his eyes to see the tent ceiling, more than a week after the Skogsrå incident. The three had exited the cave to a bright and sunny, fogless day, and a working radio, managing to easily find their way back to the campsite where Xenophilius, Ginny, and a different set of thestrals than they’d initially flown on were waiting; apparently, those two had managed to find their way back just fine after the group split, encountering no strange fog, conveniently passing some thestrals on the way. They had changed locations immediately after that, and then a few more times since then too, so were thankfully far away from that forest. Of course, they were still in a forest now, as most of Sweden was forested, but it was a much warmer forest, closer to the climate around Hogwarts. They’d been here a few days already, so it was probably time to change locations.

“So, where to today?” asked Harry, once he had dressed and exited the tent-- it seemed he had been the last one to wake. 

“Oh! You’re finally awake!” Xenophilius proclaimed. “Well, let’s get to it then; we have a few hours of flying.

“A few hours? We’re going to the other end of the country?” asked Hermione.

“Exactly! When I went to get more supplies earlier, someone in the village nearby said there were some strange hieroglyphic monoliths up in the higher mountains. Have your jackets ready, because it can get a bit chilly there.”

A bit chilly was an understatement, Harry thought, as he descended from his Thestral a few hours later. It was positively cold! They were in a place called Tarfala Valley, which was a shocking temperature and terrain change from their previous day’s searching in the southern area; it was a rough mountain tundra, with very little vegetation among the rocky ground, no trees in sight. They had landed halfway up a mountain in a spot muggles definitely couldn’t see or reach without immense difficulty. A substantial lake and snaking river sprawled below them, no doubt spawned from the glaciers towering above it. It was unfortunate that the beauty was lessened by the dark clouds above.

“Why, Harry, if you think this is cold, you better start working on increasing your tolerance,” Luna, who didn’t have a jacket on, told him, noticing him shivering a little.

Harry blinked in confusion. “Why would--”

“Because next summer we’re going to Antarctica!” Luna exclaimed. “There’s these ancient ruins there; the people who have been to them have said they’ve seen woozles near them! Well, the few that have returned, that is.”

“‘Few that have returned’?” Hermione questioned warily.

“Mhmm. But don’t worry, we’re wizards, so should be fine.”

“So, where exactly are these ruins?” Harry asked, changing the subject-- talking about Antarctica just made him feel colder.

“Well, they're in a mountain ridge few travel to, which are allegedly the tallest--”

“No, no, I meant the ones were looking for now.”

“Somewhere around here supposedly. They said they were hard to spot… something seems awfully familiar about this place though…” Xenophilius pondered. Harry got the sense that he was a bit uneasy.

“There are strange stones here,” Luna called from a distance away. As they approached, Harry noticed there were many strange glyphs on them, unlike any human writing he’d seen before. Even Hermione didn’t recognize the script. They seemed to be of a strange stone material of unknown origin; perhaps a geologist would be able to tell what it was, but it was definitely out of place for the area. Harry wasn’t sure if such stone originated from anywhere on Earth, for that matter. But of course it must… right? Right. There was an awful lot of them, after all.

“I think… I think these are ruins of something,” Hermione commented. “See? They seem to be arranged in patterns similar to the foundation of a building, one that's been wearing away for a tremendous time… 

“Yes,” Xenophilius agreed. “Though it is more than the foundation; these are only the remains of the upper walls. The rest is buried. Can’t you feel it? Sprawling chambers below us. I’m sure there’s an entrance somewhere…” Luna followed him to help search.

“How does he know that?” Harry whispered to Ginny and Hermione. Both shook their heads in bafflement. As far as they could tell, there was only the merest hint they had formerly been some structure, let alone something with ‘sprawling chambers’ beneath it. Was this another one of Xenophilius’s strange imaginings?

Soon, however, it was proven that the man had been correct about there being more below, although whether or not it was ruins or merely a cave held yet to be seen. The group began moving stones and digging around a small wafting of air Ginny had found being emitted out of a space between two larger blocks, proving there was some type of large space below. They mostly dug with shovels and moved stone by hand, and when they did use wands they were very careful, as using magic to more quickly move the earth increased the risk of causing a cave-in. The mix of excitement yet trepidation familiar to adventurers swirled thick through the air; even Hermione, who tended to be more cautious, dug with fervor to discover what lay below.

After some time, a dark abyss of a hole was unveiled. As they lit their wands to look down it, the group realized that there seemed to be a sloping stone hallway leading down into the chambers of what had undoubtedly been some ancient structure. They debated holding off on exploring, as a slight drizzle had begun to fall and it was now later in the afternoon, but there was a sort of frightful expectancy drawing them into the place, a potent curiosity towards what lay below. It was agreed that the exploration of the archaic place was of utmost importancy, as Xenophilius put it. Indeed, he seemed to be extremely insistent upon seeing the ruins below, as though the place would vanish if they dared leave it to later exploration. He also inexplicitly seemed to believe that he had seen this place before, among vague blurry memories from his younger years, even though that would have been impossible, seeing as the thing had been sealed for at least centuries, if not long before.

The slope into the depths of the ruins seemed to go on for quite a while. It was generally smoothly traversable, but there were shows of wear in some places that they had to watch out for (they realized this after Luna tripped over some loose stone). Finally, it leveled out into a wide hallway strewn with stone and sand debris. Standing in the center, their wands barely reached the ceiling and walls, but it seemed that the strange stone it was built from had many intricate carvings on them, though they were too far to make out in the dimly lit corridor. Whatever built this place must have been either quite large or used magic, for an ancient muggle human-- for indeed these ruins must be many thousands of years old-- could not have built such a hallway. Perhaps a species of ancient giants, of which had since died out, had created this place? Modern giants were certainly too primitive to have built such a place, but there were old legends of races of giants that were as intelligent as humans, who lived in houses they built rather than mountain caves; could they be the ones who constructed this?

The group approached the side of the corridor to examine some of the carved designs. They contained large detailed depictions of what appeared to be some sort of history, though none of the creatures were recognizable; even Hermione didn’t know of them, despite all her readings. Were they perhaps the result of fantasy, the drawings telling a fictional story?

“This is it!!” Xenophilius exclaimed, pointing at a drawing and looking ready to jump about in excitement. “Look! It’s a Crumple-Horned Snorkack!”

The drawing in question was of a vaguely camel-like being, long-necked with a large hump. It had short stumpy legs like a rhinoceros’s and a large ribbed horn atop its head. Its main body was decorated with honeycomb-like designs similar to some turtle shells have, although it seemed to not be shell. Scales, perhaps? It was difficult to tell as any potential color on the carven designs had either decayed over time or simply hadn’t existed. The head was resemblant of a cow’s, with donkey-like ears, over-enlarged nostrils, and cheek pouches. There was a tuft of hair on its head, as well as some on the tip of its short and thin scraggly tail.

Well, this certainly was a new development. Luna gazed at the drawing happily, while Ginny and Harry stared in amazement. They had previously thought this creature was a mere figment of imagination, but if ancient people were drawing it, could it have been real after all, some sort of extinct being from a pre- or early-human era? 

Hermione, however, had merely given it a shrewd, calculating look before examining more of the meticulously and ordered carven images and writings on the wall. At least, it was assumed to be writing, despite not being of any alphabet she knew. There was something vaguely oneiric to the symbols, constructed solely of dots, hollow circles, and lines, as though it was very distinctly non-human. The more Hermione studied the markings, the more certain she became, and as the others finished looking at the Snorkack drawing she expressed such to them.

“What do you mean, it isn’t human?” Harry asked, surprised. “If not human, what is it?”

“I’d guess some sort of Giant,” Ginny pitched in. “After all, these drawings and writing are of tremendous size.”

“No, not even that,” Hermione told them. “I’m getting the distinct impression that whatever created these drawings was wholly different from any type of humanoid known today. Perhaps different from any type of creature known today.”

Ginny looked at Hermione skeptically. This type of supernatural proclamation, from super-logical Hermione?

“I’m serious!” Hermione defended, blushing. “I know it seems far-fetched, but there’s no other explanation I can find!”

“I think it was these things,” Luna said, pointing to one of the creatures that seemed to be depicted quite a bit in the drawings covering the walls. They were vaguely cone-like, and based on the sections where they were near trees they stood twice the height of a human, if stood was the right word, for they seemed to lack legs, possibly moving in a similar manner to that of a snail. They were wholly unlike any other beings known to man. At the top of the cone stretched four limbs, completely cylindrical and judging from the drawings able to expand and contract at will, from nearly nonexistent to as tall as them. Two ended in crab-like claws, the third had a cluster of four things that looked like trumpets, and the fourth a globe with what clearly was three eyes. Four seemed to be the general symmetry of the creature, for atop this three-eyed globe there were four stalks that appeared to end in flowers, and below it hung eight things that looked like tentacles. From the way the creature carried it, that globe was undoubtedly a head.

But what was truly disconcerting about these creatures was the humanness of their actions and lives the drawings depicted. Using those head-tentacles, some of the creatures held styluses and wrote in what appeared to be books. Others were shown wearing what seemed to be satchels wrapped around the top of their cone bodies. Some tended to fields of crops. Others worked in labs, modifying these crops to better suit their race. They seemed to interact with many animals, all which were reptiles similar to dinosaurs-- among them the Snorkack, of which there were more depicted-- but did not hunt them. They were depicted sailing across the world on ships more complex than humans had yet built, exploring the world and meeting many other species, some which even seemed to be of human-like intelligence despite now clearly being from the time of dinosaurs.

Everything about them seemed to be recorded on these walls. The intelligence of these creatures seemed to be profound: equal to, or perhaps even moreso, than humans. They gave birth much differently, through spore-like things raised in water tanks, but afterwards the raising of their young was surprisingly human-like. Families stayed together, and the young attended what was clearly schools up to university-level or higher. They clearly had government, most likely socialist from the depictions of sharing food and knowledge, but it worked well for them as there seemed to be little desire for personal material possessions-- it was ultimately knowledge they pursued, not trivialities, for all basic work seemed to be done by machines. However, all was not perfect: their pursuit of knowledge led them to dispose of any disabled children or ailing members that could no longer contribute to society, a gruesome practice that caused the group much disgust upon seeing the images of it. They also seemed to have fought with some of the other species on the planet, including star-headed squid-like beings that seemed to be depicted as having the same level of intelligence this species had; despite this, they never seemed to fight amongst themselves. They also seemed to fear something unmentioned sealed away below their stone cities, always heavily guarded.

There was, however, a very strange part the group had trouble comprehending. It almost seemed to hint that these creatures could traverse time, switching minds with those in the far future and having the minds of those other beings, now trapped in the cone-creature’s body, write down all they knew of their time’s history while the cone-creature explored the future world in the traded body, before returning to record their knowledge too. In fact, it also seemed to show that the cone-creatures were not the original inhabitants of the bodies, rather some race who transferred their minds to them when their world was on the brink of destruction, and that this race would do so again before the Earth experienced the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs. 

“That’s impossible, right?” Ginny insisted. “There’s no way they can do that.”

“The Great Race can do many things humans cannot,” Xenophilius told them, as if he’d already known all this already. “I have vague memories of it… I think perhaps-- no, no, that’s impossible,” he seemed rather disturbed at whatever he had been thinking. “Let’s just keep exploring, I think the archive room is this way.” It seemed they’d reached the end of this carven corridor, which forked off into a number of paths; Xenophilius led them down the leftmost one. Luna followed blissfully, but the other three proceeded cautiously.

“Er. Xenophilius is creeping me out,” Harry confessed quietly to Ginny and Hermione. “I think he’s even forgotten about looking for the Snorkack.”

The latter frowned. “Yes, it is very strange. He seems to be very familiar with this place, and knows an awful lot of this ‘Great Race’. Is it really safe to continue on?”

“Relax, Hermione,” Ginny told her. “He may be rather quirky, but I doubt he’d harm us, even if he is acting rather odder than usual.”

“What do you think these archives he mentioned are?” Harry wondered.

“Well, archives usually refer to stored knowledge, and those depictions showed that they were extremely focused upon obtaining knowledge,” Hermione reasoned. “But any books would be completely decayed by now, seeing as this race, if the drawings are a history rather than fiction, lived billions of years ago.”

“But if they planned to traverse time to new bodies, they’d need a way to ensure the records survive,” Harry logically concluded.

Ginny snorted. “Come on, you serious believe they can do that? It’s probably some legend passed down, maybe even warped over time.”

“Even legends hold some fact,” Luna said sagely, rejoining their group. Her father seemed to be quickly walking far ahead; the teenagers began walking a bit faster in an attempt to keep up, until resigning themselves to let him stay ahead and using the “point me” spell whenever they didn’t see which corner he’d turn.

“Stop!” Harry called, grabbing Hermione’s backpack, preventing her from continuing forwards. Hermione gasped in surprise as he pointed to the floor ahead… of which there was none. The floor had become almost debris-less, so they’d become careless about their steps, nearly missing the hole.

“Do you think we made a wrong turn?” Ginny wondered.

“Hmm. No, looks like he went this way,” Hermione told them, looking at her wand’s direction. “Must have jumped the gap.”

Not wanting to risk falling, the three decided to use Wingardium Leviosa to move each other across the gap instead of jumping. To their relief, some of the dust and sand in the path had been disturbed, showing that Xenophilius had indeed successfully made it across. Shortly after, they found the man, stopped in a large circular room that appeared to have a timeline carved around it.

“I remember this,” Xenophilius muttered to himself, ignoring the teenagers’ approach. The four looked at each other in concern-- even Luna looked worried about her father’s greater-than-usual eccentricity.

However, as the four looked at the timeline, a sense of wonder and dread filled them. This timeline was of intelligent species, pictures of such as well as words describing each, and it did not stop when the Great Race had, or so they though, perished with the dinosaurs. In fact, the Great Race only occupied a small portion, despite them having flourished for millions of years. For a span, after the event that killed the dinosaurs and their conic bodies, there were no intelligent beings, then various simians were listed until humans appeared, as human history knew of; yet the human part of the timeline did not cover nearly as much time as the non-simian races of before and after them. The group didn’t want to think of what could cause such a premature, sudden stop of the human race followed by another stretch of absent life, though there were some ideas. After humans would come hardy beetle-like creatures, which it seemed to indicate the Great Race would take the bodies of as they had undoubtedly, according to the timeline, done with the conic creatures. They would live for a few million years, until the planet perished, upon which the Great Race would flee through time to Mercury’s advent of sentient vegetative life… this timeline seemed to explore not just Earth, but of all planets the Great Race had inhabited. Prior to Earth, there had been Mars, and before that it had been a planet belonging to a star that had gone supernova. And when the Sun itself perished, they would move on to a new system once again, their consciousnesses living for eternity.

Xenophilius seemed to accept the timeline as undoubted fact, and thus Luna had therefore decided it must be too, but the other three weren’t quite sure what to believe. It was so strange and far-fetched, yet everything between the Great Race’s conic form and humanity seemed correct from what they knew. How else could these beings know of humanity’s advent if not via traversing, or at least gazing, through time? Logic dictated that it couldn’t be true… no, not logic. Their small human minds were the things saying it couldn’t be true, couldn’t fathom the extent of these newfound truths. Logic had nothing to do with the acceptance or rejection of all this. After all, they were wizards and witches, learned in magic, which is the antithesis of logic!

With sudden surprise, Harry, Ginny, and Hermione realized that the Lovegoods had started moving onwards again, down another one of the many wide corridors. 

Hermione let out a gasp. “We haven’t been marking our path!”

“What do you mean?” Ginny asked.

“We won’t know how to get back,” realized Harry. 

“All those twists and turns…” Hermione mumbled, fidgeting a bit with her wand, causing the light from it to create strange patterns on the walls.

“Oh, there’s no need to worry about that,” Ginny told them confidently. “Mr Lovegood seems to have an excellent sense of this place… for whatever reason.”

“Yes, well, that’s awfully concerning, too; there’s absolutely no reason he should know about it! What if he’s possessed?”

“When would he have been?” Harry contested. “We’ve been with him for weeks!”

“Well, yes, that’s true… but he is acting oddly, you can’t deny that. Well, more oddly than usual. What if he stops acting oddly, then forgets the familiarity with this, and we can’t find our way back, and die here?!”

Ginny grinned. “Hermione… you wouldn’t be scared, would you?”

Hermione blushed. “N-no…”

“Hey, come on, we’re losing them,” Harry pointed out.

As the three hurried off, Hermione made a circular mark of blue fire upon the wall of the corridor they’d exited before turning down the sloping path that they thought Xenophilius and Luna had taken. 

After a quarter hour of walking, it dawned on the trio that perhaps this had not been the path their two companions had taken. They tried a point me spell, but it seemed it wasn’t working, which was worrisome, as the last time it hadn’t worked had been in the creepy forest.

“Should we turn back?” Hermione asked, examining the ground. “There doesn’t seem to be enough sand or debris here to leave footprints, but there was definitely a fair amount in the other room; maybe we should see if there were any footprints leading to the corridor they took.”

“No, let’s walk on a bit further,” Harry decided. “If there’s still no sign of them, or no sand, after ten minutes, we’ll head back.”

“I suppose… you know, maybe we should have informed someone we were going to explore strange ruins, just in case something happened, sent an owl to someone.”

“Too late for that now,” Ginny pointed out. “Hey, it looks like there’s something ahead, some sort of chamber…”

“I feel wind!” Harry proclaimed. “Maybe it’s an exit!”

There was a light breeze, that part was true, but it was not an exit. The trio arrived at a large circular chamber, though small compared to other areas, barely twice the diameter of the hallway. There were no other hallways connected to the room, rather it appeared that they had reached a dead end-- meaning they had indeed taken the wrong path. In the center of the room there appeared to be some sort of heavily bolted circular door in the floor, which was partly ajar. As they approached it, their wands revealed a pit filled with a degree of darkness they hadn’t known was possible; the breeze, which now seemed quite ominous, was coming from there. The three stared at it wide-eyed for a moment, frozen in place. It was absolutely clear that this was not something that was to be investigated, as it had the same feel of the Veil at the Ministry, only ten-- no, a hundred-- times worse.

Finally, the triad gathered their wits about them and slowly backed up until a safe distance away, then turned and ran as quickly yet quietly as they could back down the long hallway.

“That… was… horrible…” Ginny wheezed, bent over with hands on her knees, once they were back in the timeline room. Adrenaline from fear had allowed them to run the entire distance, but now it was catching up to them.

“What... was... it?” wondered Harry. He briefly thought about the thing from the woods, but quickly decided not even that could have come from such evil.

“For once… I don’t think… I want to know…” Hermione was actually lying on the ground; unlike Ginny and Harry, she was not an athlete, so the terror-induced abscond had taken rather more out of her.

Once the group had gathered their wits, catching their breath and drinking liberally from the water bottles they had thankfully remembered to pack, Hermione put a humongous red “X” on the corridor they had mistakenly gone down, lamenting at how it was too dangerous to use “bombarda” to seal the path off completely.

This time, the group made sure to look for disturbances in the ample debris before selecting a path; only one had what appeared to be human footprints, so they followed it, trying not to think about what could have created the distinctly non-human and quite disturbing set of footprints heading down the opposite corridor.

This time, the path did indeed lead to Luna and Xenophilius. They were in a circular room of tremendous size, walls covered in immense shelves lined with rectangular cases about three by two by one feet in size, made from an odd-looking alloy that seemed like it must be from another world. Some cases had fallen to lie open on the floor, revealing that they contained old yet perfectly preserved books, with pages appearing to be made out of a very thin plastic-like material rather than paper, clearly meant to stand the test of time. Other than that and the size, the only thing differentiating them from modern books was that the spines were on the top. Closer looks revealed that the pages were all handwritten, in many languages with many different types of lettering: Egyptian hieroglyphs; modern Arabic; the Latin letters they knew in all styles from the all-caps original form to a flowing cursive style; Chinese kanji; Anglo-Saxon runes; what Hermione decided was some type of ancient Sumerian cuneiform; what Luna recognized as the Elvish script Tolkien had supposedly created; a strange script of dots, dashes, triangles, and curves that seemed to be written in a circle; a script of interlocking shapes that seemed to have no clear pattern; and numerous other scripts, both human and, they concluded, most likely non-human.

Xenophilius appeared to have climbed a shelf, apparently looking for a specific book, muttering about how he knew it was there somewhere. In his excitement to find the book, he seemed to have forgotten that he could simply have used magic to get it down. Luna was watching him quietly, clearly worried.

“He’s rather off,” she commented, as the three joined her. “He keeps searching for a specific book, but seems terrified of what he’ll find in it.”

“Do you think it has to do with the stories on the walls of the other chamber?” Ginny wondered. “I mean, all these books seem to indicate that they’re at least partly true, with all the languages these are in.”

“I suppose that could be…” Hermione mused warily. “But, how would he even know what to look for? And how does he know this place so well? Could he be possessed?”

“No, I’m pretty sure he isn’t,” Ginny concluded. “He’s nothing like what I was. He’s clearly obsessed with something though.”

“Maybe he wrote one of these books,” Harry dared to suggest.

Hermione scoffed. “Ridiculous. That would mean that those creatures really could traverse time and borrow bodies.”

“Father has mentioned before that shortly after Hogwarts, he had a few years he can't properly remember… or, rather, has a hazy set of memories not matching up to what others said he was doing at the time,” Luna revealed. 

“But that’s ridiculous! It’s not possible,” Hermione determinedly protested, though her tone held a note of uncertainty.

“Hermione, six years ago we’d have said half of what we learn in school is impossible,” Harry pointed out.

“Magic still can’t do everything. Besides, those diagrams implied science was used-- if those things did indeed exist, there’s no way that they--”

“This is it!” Xenophilius proclaimed, scaling back down the shelves at a speed one wouldn’t think possible from a man of his build. He pried open the case with some difficulty, then pulled out the book with shaky hands and placed it gently on the floor, kneeling next to it, a little way from the rest of the group before opening it with care. Then, he froze, staring at the page.

“Father? Is something wrong?” Luna called.

Xenophilius shook his head, snapping out of his reverie, then began to cautiously turn the pages, now shaking.

“Father?”

Luna’s father let out a squeak as he leapt to his feet, then proceeded to scramble past them in fright, heading back down the corridor.

The group looked nervously at each other, then edged closer to the book, wondering what had been in the book to cause the older man to run in such fright. However, as far as they could tell, there wasn’t anything inherently frightening about the tome at all-- in fact, it was simply boring history notes. Harry, Hermione, and Ginny laughed for a moment, then realized that beside them, Luna was deathly pale.

“Luna? What’s wrong?” Ginny asked gently.

Luna’s whisper caused them all to shiver, as it seemed impossible unless you believed the history on the walls. “That is undoubtedly my father’s handwriting.”

The group stood in silence for a moment, looking at each other. How could that be? The case definitely had been sealed for a long time, and the ruins they were in had no visible signs of anything human entering them for at least a few centuries.

“Well, I suppose we ought to get going,” Hermione reasoned after a few minutes. “Figure out where Luna’s dad went…”

“He definitely went outside,” Ginny said. “No way he didn’t, with that fear he showed.”

“Should we take the book?” Harry wondered. “Or maybe one or two of the others?”

“I would like to examine some of the ones with older or unknown writing systems,” Hermione mused.

However, they did not return with any of the tomes. As the group gathered some of the cases and began to leave, a brief yet strong whistling wind flew through the place, from the corridor opposite the one they headed towards, ruffling their hair. It was a very ominous wind, and all four couldn’t help but feel rather nervous.

“What was that?” Ginny whispered.

“Bad,” was all that Luna concluded, and the other two nodded in agreement. It felt rather like the odd wind coming from the pit they’d encountered earlier.

Then, footsteps. Very loud footsteps, made by something with an unusual gait indicating an odd number of legs. A howl, worse than anything they’d ever heard, filled the group with pure dread. They froze in place, the fight-or-flight mechanic failing.

“Run,” Harry finally whispered, as the sound grew closer, fighting the force that rooted them to the ground. “RUN!” he called, much louder, when no one still moved.

That was the push everyone needed. There was a crash as their cases dropped to the ground, and a cry of “bombarda” by Hermione in an effort to block the corridor from whatever the thing was, causing much rumbling and collapsing of the stone walls, though luckily not enough for the entire place to fall. Something told them that wouldn’t hinder the creature for long. The four scrambled down the corridor as fast as they could, nearly forgetting the hole they had previously needed to help each other over; instead of being cautious they just decided to leap over it. Luna nearly lost her footing on the landing, but Harry and Ginny managed to grab onto her before she could fall. At that point, they thought the creature, or whatever it was, had stopped following them, but they didn’t want to take any chances, so continued running.

Finally, the group made it to the entrance, frantically climbing out of the ruins they had uncovered, all four using “bombarda” this time to ensure that the opening to the ruins was so completely destroyed that no one would be able to discover them for a very, very, very long time.

With that, the trip to hunt a Snorkack was concluded, despite there still technically being a couple weeks left. It was left unsaid, yet unanimously agreed upon, that no one there would ever speak of the excursion into the Great Ones’ ruins, as though their lives-- or rather, sanity-- depended on it. For there was no doubt that it did.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> If I got anything wrong about Sweden, please let me know. I've never been there myself.
> 
> The part about Antarctica references another one of Lovecraft's novellas, "At the Mountains of Madness". Should I write a sequel to this where they go explore those ruins? Not sure how it would fit, as next summer would be the start of book 7, but maybe they could go on winter break or something, although that would be surprisingly soon to be willing to explore ruins after this. Plus I do have a few other things in the works too, so no telling how soon you'll see that if I do write it (though seeing as this was started after the others I'm working on, and given my tendancy to flit between stories, it's basically a crapshoot which I get done next).
> 
> So, what do you think: Should I write another trip like this, in Antarctica?


End file.
